on a sample which we brought from one of the foundries. This opinion runs as follows—"The pig of four pounds weight, which you tell me is just as it ran from the furnace, may not be classed with common English pig. At one heat it drew out in five eights-bar, an inch wide, to the length of seventeen inches, and is so malleable and tenacious that my men wished to make some "nuts" from it;—articles for which we always use the very best material. I should class it with the best Swedish, and if the Chinese only possessed rolling machines, it might be sold for bar of quality not inferior to Iron for which I am now paying here, landed from England, £14 per ton"]—
10.—Page 15—The quantity of Silk used by each woman in binding the horn cannot be less than half a pound. Produced from their own cocoons, the cost will be trifling; but the appearance of such an exuberance of silk cord could not fail in inducing a reflection on the use of an article which, since trade has been released from the fetters that bound it prior to the war of 1840, has had so much to do with the currency and exchange of England and the whole mercantile world. Prior to 1844 the total quantity of Silk exported from China did not exceed 3,000 bales a year—Fifteen times three thousand is now the average;—and for the year 1856–7 the deliveries of China Silk in England, alone, amounted to 74,215 bales.
From enquiries made we find that this
produce, and applying, this last price, of £4, gives the value in pig at £6,000,000; to which, adding £3,000,000 as the cost of converting seven-tenths thereof (the common estimate) into bars, bolts, rods, sheets, and the other forms of wrought iron, makes the annual value of the manufacture £9,000,000.—Waterson's Cyclopædia
